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Thursday, June 18, 2015

Proportional representation gives even more power to political parties at the expense of the voters. It was rejected in referendums in three provinces, so no wonder Justin Trudeau doesn't want to give voters a chance to decide the issue in a national referendum.

2 comments:

First, we're having a referendum. It'll be in October. Trudeau is saying what he wants to do, and we get to vote on it.

Oddly enough, Mr. Lilley, who has spent the last two years losing his shit over the High River gun grab, didn't call for a referendum on C-51, which wildly curtails fundamental rights, including speech. But that doesn't warrant a referendum and, I'd point out, 40% of the vote seems okay with him to pass that.

I'd also point out that turning MPs into party hacks at this point would only formalize what has happened over the last 40 years, and something else I don't remember anyone at The Rebel protesting too much about.

Finally, it isn't going to happen because, as you've said, Trudeau is just too stupid to win. He's ten points down in multiple polls and his Hail Mary is going to an issue that no one understands and fewer still care about. He's doomed.

For all its problems, C-51 doesn't fundamentally change the way we we elect our governments, while Proportional Representation would. That's why three provincial governments, including ours, did have referendums on it.

The PR side lost all 3 resoundingly, and the PR people still maintained that they lost because people didn't understand the issue. In other words, they're saying voters are stupid and made a bad choice. That's something that could be argued about any election in any democracy at any time, and also is an apocryphal example of the really undemocratic instincts of PR proponents. I detest the system, both for the reasons that Brian mentioned, about it giving party bosses the ability to install legislators that the electorate never chose, and because it basically guarantees that nutcase fringe parties end up in parliament, often necessitating concessions to extremists for the party that wants to cobble together a governing coalition.

I keep telling my leftie friends who are such big fans of PR that they may like the idea now, but wait until the anti-abortion party that inevitably would get seats under PR becomes the swing vote in a coalition.